Here is a truly enchanting little piece, one of Lotte Reiniger's stop-motion animated cutout silhouette fairy tales. Today Reiniger is best known for her marvelous 1926 "Adventures of Prince Achmed" (her only full-length feature), but she made dozens of these delicately crafted short gems beginning in 1919. During the fifties she turned out a great many short fairy tales under her "Primrose Films" banner while based in England, and this is one of these, which were largely screened on television.
"The Sleeping Beauty", which Reiniger had previously treated in 1922, is here presented with specially composed music and a narration. Only the witchy Wicked Fairy has synchronized speech, and she makes the most of it! The familiar tale unfolds, with the King and Queen inviting all but one of the fairies to their celebration, where the good fairies bestow magic gifts upon the infant Princess (as good fairies should). The slighted Wicked Fairy of course appears and lays her curse on the child, and so the story proceeds until the inevitable happy ending.
